1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a seamless seat cover for a vehicle seat, and to a method and apparatus for making such a seat cover. More particularly, the present invention relates to a thermoforming apparatus, a method of using that apparatus to produce a seamless vehicular seat cover, and to a seamless vehicular seat cover which is a product of a thermoforming process.
2. Description of the Background Art
Many different types of automotive seat covers are commercially available on the marketplace today. A variety of patents have been issued for various types of vehicular seat covers. U.S. Pat. No. 3,695,692 discloses a temporary "plastic bag" type of protective seat cover, for installation on a vehicular seat during assembly line production. Other examples of some issued patents on seat covers are U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,892,440, 4,232,899, 4,669,779, 5,265,933, 5,403,066, 5,655,813, and 5,709,431.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,906,516 discloses a leather-like foam sheet for general use in a vacuum forming process. Some methods are known for using thermoforming processes to make composite vehicle seats and components thereof, such as are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,000,805 and 5,468,434.
New governmental regulations are expected to go into effect shortly, which will require seat covers for use in emergency vehicles, such as police, fire, and ambulance rescue vehicles, to be seamless. This is because of the possible risk of contamination if pathogenic material should become trapped in seams of a seat cover in an emergency vehicle. In particular, a risk exists that blood of an individual with the HIV virus, who has been in an accident or emergency situation, may become spilled on a seat cover in an emergency vehicle, and even after cleanup, some of this blood may remain in the seams of a seat cover and may pose a health risk.
As a result, a need exists in the art for a seamless protective vehicle seat cover, for placing over and protectively covering a vehicle seat assembly. In particular, a need exists for a seamless protective vehicular seat cover which is relatively inexpensive and simple to produce, yet which can be manufactured reliably in volume.